New polling data explores life outcomes for young adults by looking at employment, salary, homeownership, civic engagement and more.
A new report, Turning the Tassel: What Gen Z Says About Life After High School Graduation, offers one of the most comprehensive looks to date at how well America’s public schools are preparing young people to graduate and thrive as adults.
Based on a national survey of 5,000 public high school alumni conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Agency, Inc., this report examines critical life outcomes for Generation Z, including employment, earnings, postsecondary attainment, homeownership and civic engagement for young adults who graduated high school between 2015 and 2025.
“Historically, the performance of public schools in America has been largely measured by graduation rates and standardized test scores,” said Debbie Veney, Founder and CEO of Agency, Inc, and author of this report. “Maybe it’s time to look at some other data points, too. While these are important measures, they do not tell the full story. They are backwards-looking metrics that say nothing about how well students fare after high school graduation. And that’s what we wanted to know,” she explained.
Employment outcomes are mixed for recent public high school graduates. According to the survey, 49% report working full-time, 19% are looking for work, 18% are working part-time and 14% report not working and only being enrolled in college or another type of formal education.
Among those who work a full-time or part-time job, young adults are more likely to work in a sector that is shrinking—like customer service or retail (24%)—than one that is growing, like the skilled trades (16%) or one that is likely to pay a high salary, like engineering/science/technology (12%).
Nationally, about three-quarters of recent high school alumni report having enrolled in some type of postsecondary education or training program since graduating high school. However, less than one-half believe their high schools prepared them for the rigors of postsecondary coursework. Perhaps that is why completion is uneven. Less than 4 in 10 young adults (39%) who began a two-year degree program completed it, and only about one-half (48%) who pursued a four-year degree completed it. Despite low completion rates, traditional four-year and two-year degrees remain the most popular postsecondary choices for recent public school graduates, with nearly 60% (58%) of Generation Z reporting they enrolled in college after high school.
On average, recent public high school graduates who work full-time or part-time earn $85,988 nationally. Less than a quarter of young adults (24%) who graduated between 2015 and 2025 own their own homes. More than two-fifths (41%) live rent-free with family or friends.
The findings also reveal a striking pattern: the type of public school students attended matters more for long-term life outcomes than race or socioeconomic background. While most Generation Z graduates are employed and pursuing education beyond high school, alumni of public charter schools consistently report higher salaries, greater degree completion, stronger financial independence and higher rates of homeownership than peers from district-run schools.
Among the report’s other key findings:
- Charter school alumni earn, on average, $22,000 more per year than district school graduates within 10 years of finishing high school.
- Charter school alumni are slightly more likely to complete postsecondary degrees at each level of degree attainment, including associate, bachelor’s and graduate degrees – for a total of 7 percentage points higher.
- Homeownership rates among charter school alumni are 10 percentage points higher nationally (35% vs 25%), with even larger gaps in states like Washington (48% vs 18%), Texas (40% vs. 25%) and Florida (35% vs 23%).
- Among Black, Latino, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and Native American graduates who attended charter schools, they are just as likely as their White counterparts from a district school to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree—effectively closing the racial gaps in degree attainment.
- On average, working charter school graduates who self-identified as Black, Latino, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander or Native American earn nearly $55,000 more per year than alumni of color who did not graduate from a charter school.
“The outcomes for charter school alumni are simply astounding,” said Veney. “We did not embark on this project with any idea we would discover such remarkable differences—based solely on the type of public schools these young people attended. But the patterns are undeniable.”
The report also highlights how public education systems must evolve to meet changing workforce demands, noting that many Generation Z graduates are not equipped to enter high-growth fields like healthcare, technology and advanced manufacturing where many positions remain unfilled.
With Generation Z now comprising nearly one-fifth of the electorate, the report urges policymakers to use life-outcome data—not just test scores—to guide decisions that will affect them. This new generation of diverse, digitally native young adults are largely unaligned with any particular political party. They are evenly split between Democrats (24%) and Republicans (24%), but the plurality (43%) are Independents. They are more likely to be registered voters (80%) than the national average (73.6%), but less likely to have voted (55%) than the national average (65%).
“This study represents an innovative approach to evaluating educational effectiveness by tracking actual life outcomes rather than just test scores and graduation rates. The data provides policymakers, educators, and education advocates with crucial insights into which educational pathways are truly preparing students for economic success and adult independence. This methodology should become the gold standard for evaluating educational effectiveness—because ultimately, the true test of our schools lies not in what students achieve while enrolled, but in how well they thrive in the years that follow,” said Rebecca Purser, Research Director, Education & Non-Profits at The Harris Poll.
Methodology: The research was conducted online in the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Agency, Inc. among 5,000 U.S. adults age 18+ who graduated from public (district or charter) high school within the last 10 years. The survey was conducted September 9–22, 2025. Data are weighted where necessary by age, gender, race/ethnicity, region, education, marital status, household size, employment, household income and political party affiliation to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population. Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within ± 1.9 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest. All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to other multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including, but not limited to coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.
